The 1941 meeting of the MLA was held in Indianapolis at the end of the year.  Cleanth Brooks is listed in the proceedings. McLuhan is not listed, but Indianapolis is only 250 miles from St Louis. Presumably with SLU colleagues, would he not have driven or taken the train over to the event?

It is not known if McLuhan made the trip or, if he made it, if he met Brooks there. But at some point in 1942 or 1943 (years in which the MLA did not hold its annual meeting) the two did meet and established a kind of working association that began with Brooks helping to get McLuhan’s ‘Edgar Poe’s Tradition’ paper published early in 1944. That 1941 MLA meeting, held days before the start of 1942, may provide the best candidate for them to have done so.